REAL ITALIAN HOAGIES: DELI & MEATBALL

REAL DELI STYLE ITALIAN HOAGIES

If you can say one thing about Italians, it's that they love to eat — and they know how to do food right. But if you aren't eating Italian sandwiches the authentic way, then you're missing out. If you've been getting an Italian-style sandwich from a chain restaurant, for example, your head is probably going to explode when you try a real Italian hoagie with authentic ingredients.

To keep it a real Italian hoagie: You’ll need to hold the mustard, hold the mayonnaise, hold the bacon, pickles and sliced avocado. Because honestly, they just don't belong in a real Italian hoagie..

First you must buy the best 12-inch Italian-style hoagie roll you can get your hands on (you can't go wrong with our Italian Hoagie rolls: Simply the best!), slice the rolls horizontally (but not all the way through), and then layer accordingly:

Deli-sliced boiled ham

Deli-sliced capicola

Deli-sliced provolone cheese

Deli-sliced Genoa salami

Shredded iceberg lettuce

Thinly sliced tomato

Thinly sliced white onion

Red wine vinegar and oil (extra-virgin olive oil is fine)

Salt, pepper, Italian oregano

Hot or sweet peppers, if desired

You can stuff your Italian hoagies with as much meat and cheese as you like, but I've found that 1/4 pound of each meat and cheese above yields about two good-size, well-proportioned hoagies.

REAL ITALIAN MEATBALL HOAGIES

First, pick your bread. Personally, I like an Italian-style roll, one of those loaves that's a little wider than a traditional French baguette, as white as bleached linens, super soft throughout, with a potato-chip-thin crust that crackles and makes a mess of crumbs and flakes on your shirt when you bite through it. My reasoning is that meatballs are (or should be) tender, and I don't want my bread fighting with them—a loaf that's too sturdy won't play nice with such a squishable filling. The crust should have just enough personality to add some crackle, but nothing substantial enough to make biting difficult. The best roll I have found is the Rêver Artisan Bakery Italian Hoagie roll.

I warm the loaf in an oven, but don't toast for the same reason I choose soft bread: except for that flaky crisp crust, I want tenderness to surround my meatballs. Once it's warmed, I trim off the knobby, tough ends of the loaf, because, honestly, does anyone really like gnawing through those parts? I know I don't, and I especially don't like the way crusty ends can crush a tender meatballs. Then I slice the bread in half, drizzle some olive oil on the top and bottom pieces, and give them a quick rub with a raw clove of garlic to punch the flavor up a little bit.

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